The 2000 CIA World Factbook

"The 2000 CIA World Factbook" by the United States Central Intelligence Agency is a comprehensive reference work published in the late 20th century. This factual compendium provides detailed information about various countries around the world, covering aspects such as geography, demographics, government, economy, and more. It aims to deliver a snapshot of the political and social landscapes of nations, making it a valuable resource for understanding global affairs. At the start of the publication, the introduction includes acknowledgments and explains the document's structure, which organizes countries in alphabetical order. The beginning highlights Afghanistan, providing a rich background on its history, geography, and current socio-political situation as of the year 2000. It describes Afghanistan's problematic civil strife following years of conflict, the current dominance of the Taliban, and various social issues affecting its population, setting the stage for the in-depth analyses that follow for other countries within the Factbook. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

The Central Intelligence Agency, known informally as the Agency, metonymously as Langley and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and conducting covert action through its Directorate of Operations. The agency is headquartered in the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.